Article

Author:

Kirsten Harris

University of Sheffield

About Kirsten

Kirsten Harris is in the third year of a Literature PhD at the University of Sheffield in which she looks at representations of Walt Whitman and the interpretation of his poetry in the socio-political movement at the turn of the century that can be described as ethical socialism. She examines the literature produced by a Bolton group of working-class Whitmanites, Edward Carpenter's Whitmanesque long poem 'Towards Democracy', Whitman's inclusion in a variety of socialist journals, and William Clarke's book-length critique of Whitman's poetry. She has also taught Level 1 and Level 3 undergraduate courses.

Abstract

This short essay analyses British socialist readings of Walt Whitman’s ‘Pioneers! O Pioneers!’ and explores some of the ways in which the poem was appropriated for the socialist movement. Despite its overt American nationalism, ‘Pioneers’ was one of the key Whitman poems for British socialists: extracts were frequently reprinted in socialist newspapers and periodicals, it was referred to in articles and obituaries, and it was invoked in speeches. It was assimilated into a familiar fin de siècle socialist spiritual discourse and used directly as political propaganda. This paper discusses the means by which the ‘Americanness’ of ‘Pioneers’ was either overlooked or actively edited out and its militaristic components were emphasised. By focusing on the martial imagery and rhetoric of ‘Pioneers’, nineteenth-century British socialists were able to translate Whitman’s call to America into a rallying cry for the extension of a global socialist democracy.

First published in Drum-Taps less than a month after the assassination
of Abraham Lincoln, ‘Pioneers! O Pioneers!’ (1865) has often, and with good reason,
been read in the context of national reconstruction after the American Civil War. As
Eric Mottram has suggested, the poem ‘loudly articulates healing nationalism through
the tradition of westward expansion’.1 Whitman employs the rhetoric of manifest
destiny and expansionism as a unifying strategy to counter the perceived threat of
disunion and division to the American democratic ideal: the development of western
America is presented as a common goal able to heal the nation’s wounds after the
Civil War. The frontier era did not draw to a close until the end of the nineteenth
century so the figure of the pioneer could be read both literally and symbolically.
In ‘Pioneers’ the myth of the west, so embedded in the development of the United
States, functions as a continuum linking the past to the future; expansionism
encompasses both tradition and potential. In national terms, the speaker’s vision is
resolutely inclusive: ‘All the hands of comrades clasping, all the Southern, all the
Northern’. The image of unity is reinforced by Whitman’s insistent use of the plural
pronoun ‘we’. Throughout Leaves of Grass Whitman makes use of the
catalogue to stress the variety of individuals and occupations that make up both the
social whole and the poet’s own capacious self, but in ‘Pioneers’ there is no such
division of labour. The ‘conquering’, ‘holding’, ‘daring’, ‘venturing’, ‘felling’,
‘stemming’, ‘vexing’, piercing’, ‘surveying’ and ‘upheaving’ are all carried out by
an integrated and undifferentiated ‘we’.

[2]

This inclusivity only extends so far as the national borders:

Have the elder races halted?Do they droop and end their lesson, wearied, over therebeyond the seas?We take up the task eternal, and the burden, and thelesson, Pioneers! O pioneers!

The speaker’s progressive ideal unifies his compatriots by setting them apart from
other ‘lands’ and ‘races’, at the vanguard of a progressive westward movement.
Despite such overt Americanism, the poem was included in the two British editions of
Whitman’s poetry published during his lifetime: William Michael Rossetti’s
Poems by Walt Whitman (1868) and Ernest Rhys’s ThePoems of Walt Whitman (1886).2 Rossetti’s editorial decisions were
motivated more by aesthetic criteria than Rhys’s, and his inclusion of ‘Pioneers’ can
be understood as part of his stated aim to present Whitman to the British in such a
way that ‘a fair verdict on Whitman should now be pronounced in England on poetic
grounds alone’. 3 Rhys’s editorial
criteria were more avowedly socialist; indeed, these were the grounds on which he
appealed to Whitman for permission to publish his work in the Canterbury poets:

What I – and many young men like me, ardent believers in your poetic initiative –
chiefly feel about this, is, however, that an edition at a price which will put it in
the hands of the poorest member of the great social democracy is a thing of
imperative requirement. You know what a fervid stir and impulse forward of Humanity
there is today in certain quarters! And I am sure you will be tremendously glad to
help us here, in the very camp of the enemy, the stronghold of caste and aristocracy
and all selfishness between rich and poor!4

Rhys used ‘Pioneers’ within this democratic social framework; not only did he include
the poem in his selection but he also gave the ‘elder races’ stanza as an epigraph,
made allusions to its rhetoric and themes in the final paragraphs of his preface, and
concluded with a ‘call to arms’ that echoed that of Whitman’s speaker. By not
directly acknowledging the nationalist elements of the poem, ‘Pioneers’ could be
adopted in such a way that its Americanness was largely side-stepped and it could be
used instead to further the socialist cause within Britain.

[3]

The letter quoted above shows that Rhys shared the speaker’s critical attitude
towards the ‘elder race’ to some extent: the structure of Britain’s socio-political
systems was perceived as being outdated and unjust. Edward Whitley proposes that
‘Rhys seems to position America as the geographic site of democracy and Whitman’s
poetry as the means for accessing it for British ends. He seems to be trying to
recuperate from Whitman and America the democracy he saw lacking in Victorian
England’.5 Certainly, this is one way in which the
progressive march of ‘Pioneers’ is invoked. Whitman is offered as a source of
democratic inspiration:

And with his tones of heroic incitement and earnest remonstrance ringing in our
midst, we who are young may do much in the stress and tumult of the advance to a new
and endangered era for the high order of love and truth and liberty.6

Again: ‘We who are young may well respond to him, too, in turn, and advance
fearlessly in the lines of his unique initiative.’7 The tone and the martial imagery recall that of ‘Pioneers’. This
is epitomised in the double meaning of the word ‘lines’ which conflates the military
with the poetic. Luke Mancuso notes that the word ‘pioneer’ can be traced back to the
French peonier, or ‘foot-soldier’, and usefully suggests that in
‘Pioneers’ it ‘denotes an imagistic parallel to the martial images of the war
troops’.8 Indeed, this
parallel is the poem’s core premise; Whitman exploits the semantic duality of the
word and presents the notion of westward expansion in military terms. The rhetoric
and imagery of war is reshaped and directed towards a reconstructive unifying
purpose. This trope frames the poem: in the opening stanza the pioneers are not
called to get tools ready but ‘weapons’; in the final stanza the trumpet sound at
daybreak calls the ‘army’ of pioneers to their places. Many words with military
overtones are chosen, such as ‘debouch’ and ‘detachments’, and the extended metaphor
of the war march is employed.

[4]

‘Pioneers’, then, acts as a metaphorical rallying cry for the establishment and
expansion of democracy, which is recalled in the final lines of Rhys’s preface.
However, in its position as epigraph, the ‘elder races’ stanza is removed from its
national context; the opposition it implies between America and Britain is not so
apparent. Additionally, the repetition of the word ‘young’, variants of which are
used five times in the final paragraph, suggests that Rhys does more than reiterate
the conceit that America was the nation of youthful democratic promise whilst Britain
was that of aged decrepitude. In ‘Pioneers’ Whitman engaged with popular discourse
that stressed the youth of the American nation: the terms ‘children’ and ‘youths’
that the speaker uses to address his countrymen and women also carry connotations of
health, vigour and potentiality. In his appraisal of Whitman, Rhys expresses ideas
similar to those of the ‘elder races’ stanza, but divides the old and young down
generational rather than national lines. The ‘elder races’ were interpreted as the
previous generations which had either directly or indirectly supported aristocratic
and capitalist socio-political systems:

It is the younger hearts who will thrill to this new incitement, – the younger
natures, who are putting forth strenuously into the war of human liberation. Older
men and women have established their mental and spiritual environment; they work
according to their wont.9

This interpretation ensured that Britain was not excluded from a place in the
movement towards the democratic ideal. Adopting the military metaphor used by
Whitman, and perhaps alluding to the commonly-held belief that the American Civil War
had from the beginning been a war to free the slaves, Rhys uses Whitman to urge the
British youth towards socialist action.

[5]

Rhys self-consciously recognised his role to be interpretive, as he explained in a
letter to Whitman:

This is my chief claim to be your interpreter at all in England then – that I stand
with the band of young men who have the future in their hands, young men of the
people, not academicians; not mere university students, but a healthy, determined,
hearty band of comrades, seeking amid all their errors and foolishness to help the
average, everyday man about them. 10

Rhys presents the vision of comradeship depicted in ‘Pioneers’ and many of the other
Leaves of Grass poems back to Whitman in his own terms: it is
youthful and healthy and distanced from formal education. However, he reinterprets
the purpose of such comradeship; the task of the ‘band of young men’ was not to
expand and establish themselves, but to ‘help the average, everyday man’. The
patriotic becomes altruistic. In the introduction Rhys states this interpretation
overtly: ‘The spirit of comradeship, as opposed to the antagonism of class with
class, and nation with nation, which has stirred men selfishly and cruelly so long:
this were the salvation, cries Walt Whitman, of the new Democracy.’11 For Rhys, the transformative potential of unified
comradeship negates rather than relies on the discord between nations.

[6]

Rhys was not alone amongst British readers in adopting and adapting the military
metaphor of ‘Pioneers’ to broader social ends. James William Wallace, the unofficial
leader of a Bolton reading group with strong connections to the socialist movement
which was devoted to Whitman, saw the Civil War as ‘the pivot on which [Leaves
of Grass] turns’.12 In
a speech to the group, given on what would have been Whitman’s birthday the year
after his death, Wallace stated: ‘It is as well to say that great as the American War
was in itself it was only as a symbol of still mightier battles, it was only a
fractional part of the battles which were to follow and which we too have to engage
in.’13 Before he concluded by reading ‘Pioneers’, Wallace explained,
with a reminder that he did not need to say much because ‘Walt’s words ought to be
sufficiently strong’, that he understood this ‘mightier’ combat to be ‘a war for the
great idea – that of perfect, free individuals’ which each person is ‘summoned to
help in forwarding’. Wallace’s synecdochal reading of the Civil War as symbol draws
on the biblical discourse of spiritual warfare: each follower is called to fight to
further the message that leads to ultimate freedom for humankind. Wallace shared his
interpretation of the ‘message’ of Leaves of Grass in socialist
newspapers, corresponded about it with socialist activists such as Keir Hardie and
Katherine Conway, wrote a book entitled Walt Whitman and the World
Crisis published by the Labour Press, and spoke at Bolton branch meetings
of the Independent Labour Party, believing that the spiritual dimensions of Whitman’s
poetics were of utmost importance to the developing socialist movement.

[7]

In a speech given at the ILP conference in Bolton in 1894 that again concluded with
the reading of ‘Pioneers’, Wallace urged towards ‘moral advancement’ in the sense
that he had ‘learned’ from his ‘master’ Walt Whitman:

Helping, serving, and educating all with whom he comes in contact – devout beyond all
past devotion accepting no ecclesiasticism or priesthood being himself his own priest
– seeing God in every object, in every moment and in every human being – letting the
divine soul shine with increasing clearness and fullness through himself and all his
works – knowing himself one with all others.14

Wallace book-ends his paper with references to the pioneer: towards the beginning he
proposes that those who are morally advanced in the sense that they have a great
capability for sympathy and love ‘no matter what their political or other creed may
be – no matter how indifferent or hostile they may now be to the Socialist movement –
are the true pioneers of the Socialism of the future’, and in closing he commented
that ‘we shall become the pioneers of the true, the human society towards which our
Socialism itself is but a stage’. This suggests that, for Wallace, socialist
agitation was merely one ‘symbol’, like the Civil War, of the movement towards ‘true
democracy’. Wallace shifts the pioneer topos away from its martial
connotations, and champions instead the development of uncharted spiritual regions
upon which the more overtly political manifestations of socialism should be founded.
Before reading ‘Pioneers’, Wallace specified that it was ‘addressed to each and all
of us’ indicating that, for him, the rallying cry of ‘Pioneers’ was intended for all,
not only postbellum America.

[8]

Wallace’s speech and Rhys’s introduction are examples of how the process of
remodelling ‘Pioneers’ to include the British was conducted publicly. Wallace’s use
of the poem was didactic; he drew on ‘Pioneers’ to teach socialists the divine
message that he believed to underlie the political principles of socialism. The
Labour Church used it more explicitly as socialist propaganda, not simply overlooking
the elements of American nationalism but actively editing them out. For example, the
Church produced a pamphlet promoting the ‘Labour Church Pioneers’, an affiliation of
individual supporters not living near a Labour Church, which opened with a quotation
from Whitman’s ‘To a Pupil’: ‘Is reform needed? Is it through you? / The greater the
reform needed the greater the personality you need to accomplish it’. The pamphlet
outlines the principles of the Church, such as ‘the Labour movement is a Religious
Movement’, and suggests the kind of ‘work’ that Labour Church pioneers could
undertake and then prints twelve of the twenty-six stanzas of ‘Pioneers’. The
selection is telling: stanzas I, II, IV, V, VI, XII, XIII, and XXIII to XXVI are
included which, once again, emphasise the martial elements of the poem, recalling the
discourse of spiritual warfare and using it as a ‘call to arms’. The ‘gentler
stanzas’ such as ‘Life’s involv’d and varied pageants’ and ‘All the hapless silent
lovers’ are omitted, as are those which depict the development of the land. The
impression given is insistently that of a hard-fought and enduring battle which the
soldier must enter willingly. Stanzas such as ‘Not for delectations sweet’ and ‘Do
the feasters gluttonous feast’ appeal to socialist sensibilities by contrasting the
pioneer’s ‘diet hard’ and ‘blanket on the ground’ with ‘riches’ and unnecessary
consumption. Moreover, all references to specific geographic regions are edited out,
thereby entirely removing the American framework of the poem; the ‘task eternal’ is
presented as universal; its completion is no longer located in the American west but
in the success of the labour movement.

[9]

In a Labour Leader article on the centenary of Whitman’s birth Wallace
claimed that ‘of the era of true Democracy—Whitman is so far the greatest pioneer and
exemplar’.15 For many of Whitman’s admirers
associated with the developing British socialist movements, Whitman himself
epitomised the concept of the pioneer; he was seen as a kind of idealised spiritual
backwoodsman, able to overcome social injustice by exploring and communicating the
true nature of comradeship. This ‘message’ had ramifications that extended beyond
Whitman’s American borders.

8Colorado men are we,From the peaks gigantic, from the great sierras and thehigh plateaus,From the mine and from the gully, from the huntingtrail we come,Pioneers! O pioneers!

9From Nebraska, from Arkansas,Central inland race are we, from Missouri, with the con-tinental blood intervein'd;All the hands of comrades clasping, all the Southern, allthe Northern,Pioneers! O pioneers!